Christian Christfort Gormsen reviews Peter Sloterdijk’s Out of the World (Stanford University Press, 2024 [1993])
“Existence precedes essence,” said Sartre. We’re all alone, “condemned to be free”, and so on. In his newly translated Out of the World (2024 [1993]), the German philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk would, on the one hand, agree. The self is not innate; it must be formed. On the other hand, while Sartre would say the self is formed by choice, Sloterdijk thinks it is shaped by practice. Relatedly, for Sloterdijk freedom is promoted through practice; whereas what matters for the existentialists is what we choose to do with our inborn freedom.
In this light, we can grasp the core of Sloterdijk’s philosophical anthropology, which is that humans increasingly live “out of the world”, giving rise to a sort of existential malaise. This is a sickness different from that identified by modern philosophers in the vein of Kant, with their incessant emphasis on freedom as autonomy. Sloterdijk maintains that the problem is not one of loss of autonomy; it is one of “de-worlding”, that is the retreat of the individual human being from the world. As we will see, this ‘retreat’ is not only existential, but also has consequences for contemporary democracy and the idea of civic participation.
He gives credibility to this assertion by showing throughout the eight chapters of Out of the World how and why people in various ways escape the world and, accordingly, what it means to live in our current culture and democracy. As such, his approach is not metaphysical, nor is it particularly grounded in our social institutions. Rather, Sloterdijk is interested in what people do and the reasons behind their actions.
In Chapter 1, he begins by interrogating the idea thatpeople in modern society feel both alienated and unfulfilled. Once one has “bumped into oneself” (4), he writes, the point is to “come to the world” (20). And to do so, he claims, one must cultivate a certain “hardness” (27). Meanwhile, this “hardness” is at odds with individuation in modern times, he thinks, which means to engage in the “ambiguity of the self” (27). As he puts it: “We see it as progress if we succeed in overcoming the […] primitive heritage of self-hardening and self-definitions with an elastic form of selfhood” (27). With this sketch of selfhood in hand, Sloterdijk calls for cultivating “solubility”, meaning the ability to “let oneself be immersed” (34).
In Chapters 2-3, he begins by exploring historical and religious examples of escapism, followed by more contemporary ones. Sloterdijk asks: Where did the monks go? Into the desert, he explains, which is the least evil place in the world, but also the “most hostile to life” (46). In his view, this example is revealing. Those who seek out ‘the desert’ today also attempt to escape, but unlike the monks, they do so not just in a spiritual and metaphysical sense. For instance, drug abuse, he thinks, shows us that “flight from the world” can transform into a sort of “world-addiction”. Sloterdijk argues that this is not because drugs are problematic per se. Rather, it is the act of alienation that drugtaking embodies, and the addictive craving to repeat that act, which concerns him. Indeed, “even the most worldly and realistic behavior of humans, namely work, can take on a drug function” (81). We need to take up “inexistentiality”, he argues, in a way so humans can resist escapism more consciously, whether we speak about drugs or workaholism.
In Chapter 4, he connects this conception of world-alienation with a Freudian “death drive”, exploring the relationship between creative expression and the idea of wanting to exit the world. In Chapter 5, he broadens the inquiry by drawing across cultures, including Indian spiritual traditions, before toggling in Chapter 6 to the alternative to world flight. How can we dive into the world without simultaneously negating it?
In attempting to answer this question, he draws attention to what he sees as a basic contradiction of human nature. He points to Kant and his idea that, “If individuals want to transition from mere being-there or objective presence to mature existence […], they must become the directors of their lives and give their existence a kind of constitution” (152), which implies that people are expected to become mature and free, even though they had no ‘say’ in coming into existence in the first place (153). Sloterdijk’s view is, by contrast, more organic and continuous. He proposes “dissolution”, which is a mode of being possible for “grown-up, conflict-hardened adults […] insofar as they release themselves in the world as into a stream of ongoing birth” (163). To support this claim, Sloterdijk takes the example of music. For him, listening to music means “either moving toward the world or fleeing it” (171), and becomes a liminal space between being in the world and being out of it. This fluid way of being ties back to his call for “solubility” in Chapter 1. It also squares with the idea of “joining the community” with which he closes the book in Chapter 8.
As such, in Out of the World, Sloterdijk circles the question how the individual can come into the world. Despite this focus, though, a kind of ‘anti-individualism’ emanates from it. In this respect, the book sits well with critiques of neoliberalism, commodification, and capitalism. More broadly, the book resonates with our current culture and political climate where liberalism, as a broader blueprint for society, has entered a form of crisis. In contrast to liberalism, boundaries and social structures are for Sloterdijk both good and necessary. Without such structures, including places like universities and gymnasiums where humans can ‘practice their existence’, humans cannot lead authentic lives.
While it might sound like it, Sloterdijk is not a communitarian. Instead, he challenges liberal, existentialist, and postmodern narratives of the 20th century, and he does so in a way that might echo with many readers today. As he stated, in 1993: “Every single individual life is run through by the fronts of the titanic battle between yes and no, participation and separation, relation and schism” (36). Out of the World seems to hit a nerve in contemporary society with its increasing polarization at the political level and atomization of the self at the individual one. Due to social media, algorithms, and AI, we have become stuck in our own separate political and social realities. We have, in other words, become alienated from public life in a deeply problematic way. On this view, Sloterdijk’s call for recalibrating the individual with a view to genuinely be in this world seems extremely pertinent today.
Sloterdijk seems indeed to believe that the world is inherently good. “How could I not have the affair of my life with it?” (186), he writes. But this is of course not self-evident. For instance, from a neo-republican perspective, if our social and economic worlds lead to arbitrary domination, by employers, for example, individuals are not free. Rising inequalities, gig economy, nationalism, populism, and the rejection of migrants at our borders suggest a world filled with arbitrary domination; a world much ‘worse’ than the one Sloterdijk supposes. On a neo-republican view, no amount of ‘existential practice’ will change that. One could push it further and ask: Should we rather take a step back from the world and its infrastructures, including media and AI, and mass universities and ‘mediocrity’, and lean into the “metaphysical appetite for death” (92) instead? Why not, following Schopenhauer, get lost in the “beautiful and sublime”, as opposed to ‘practicing’ for a world that fails to deliver (real) freedom anyway?
Sloterdijk’s view is, of course, much more optimistic and conscientious. “The duty to be happy applies more than ever in times like ours,” (214), he writes, in 1993. Interestingly, in this respect, he also speculated that perhaps we’re witnessing “the last generations of adults whose self-image is characterized by stoic motifs” (28). But today, to the contrary, God, boundaries, self-religion, and self-discipline have come back with a vengeance. Such ideas are looming in political discourse and spreading over social media. Whether one sees this as a cause for celebration or lament, maybe Sloterdijk’s call for solubility has already found its place in contemporary culture. Either way, though, the open question remains if Sloterdijk’s existential practices can genuinely return the individual to the world and meaningfully address the structural problems that civic withdrawal poses to contemporary democracy today.
To conclude, while Sloterdijk remains an optimist in that regard, the book is also bleak, often served with a dose of pessimism. As when he sets out from the observation that: “Certainly, existing always means having to accept the disadvantage of having been born” (83). Anyone familiar with Emil Cioran will be reminded of his dark aphorisms – often dark to the point that they become comical. Certainly, Sloterdijk is, at times, funny too. And once the reader gets accustomed to his style and (insanely) rich vocabulary that he rarely shies away from, Out of the World is, in fact, entertaining.
That said, it’s primarily a book for fellow philosophers and cultural theorists. For students of the social sciences and the humanities, it offers a stimulating lens on the conditions of modern existence, one that invites us to confront the hard question of how the individual can meaningfully live and participate today. Surely, despite being written three decades ago, this new edition feels both provocative and timely.
Christian Christfort Gormsen is an Assistant Editor in the Democracy and Culture Section.
